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Trailer Park: “The Three Stooges” Has A Perfect Cast But An Awful Premise

Jason Serafino is a contributing writer at Complex who covers movies, TV, and comic books.

Dec 07, 2011

After spending years stuck in development hell, the Farrelly Brothers are finally ready to bring The Three Stooges to the big screen. While the movie was originally supposed to star Benicio Del Toro (Moe), Sean Penn (Larry), and Jim Carrey (Curly), the final product on the screen settles for lesser known actors like Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes, and Will Sasso as Moe, Larry, and Curly respectively. The result might not be an A-list cast, but these three are nearly identical to the original Stooges.

Everything that a Stooges fan could ever want is in this trailer: Moe is a straight-up jerk, Larry gets all of the punishment, and Curly is overweight and off-the-wall. If you close your eyes and give a listen, the end result is almost indistinguishable from the real Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard. It's actually pretty amazing what they have done here.

However, once you get over how magnificent these actors look and sound in their roles, the grave reality of how bad this movie could potentially be begins to set in. The Farrelly Brothers aren’t exactly well-known for their move making skills, but The Three Stooges looks bland even by their standards. They seem to have taken all of the charm from the original Stooges shorts and traded it in for a thin comedy that looks like something Adam Sandler would put out.

A lot of this has to do with the modern setting. Putting the Stooges in a period piece would have separated this movie from the rest of the cheap comedies in theaters now. There would have been an interesting style and production design to go along with the laughs, and it would have added some authentic Stooges flavor to the film; unfortunately, now we have to suffer through Curly trying to work an iPhone and some unnecessary Jersey Shore cameos. At least Larry David looks hilarious in a dress.

Despite the roles of the Stooges themselves being near-perfect, we can’t help but wonder if this movie is going to wind up as just another boring bargain-bin flick once it gets released on April 4, 2012.